Pieta
by Flame Tigress
Summary: When it's all over and Voldemort is finally defeated, an old "more than friend" finds answers and more questions about the life of Tom Riddle, the abused half-Muggle orphan who would become the feared Dark Lord.


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Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling wrote all of these characters, places, etc. I just do the wacky situations…

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Author's Note: If you have not read it already, read my story "Of Intellectual Relationships and School Crushes." If you don't, this story might make some sense, but less than it would if you did read the other. This is an alternate sequel ("The Dark Lord's Armageddon" is the other sequel to "O.I.R.&S.C.") in which not everybody dies. Ever so much more uplifting. "Pietà" is a reference to the sculpture by Michelangelo of the Virgin Mary cradling the crucified Jesus in her lap, just for some background info. Think wounds of the crucifixion. I know I say in my bio that I'm Jewish; I also happen to be educated in other religious traditions and not afraid to be blasphemous in the Christian world.

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Pietà

Pity

It's over. Suddenly, it's all over, and the black-robed body lies crumpled on the ground. The one who murdered thousands, terrorized millions, is a small, helpless, lifeless figure prostrate on the red-stained green. There is a single, disembodied cry of pain. Years of fear and tyranny are over in one flash of green light, and all that is left is the still body and the seventeen-year-old boy standing frozen with his wand raised.

Albus, Alastor, Remus, Sirius, Ron, Hermione, and I have arrived just in time to see it – surrounded by a ring of silent Death Eaters, good has just won the battle, and the very embodiment of evil has been defeated.

Harry Potter looks up, his startlingly green eyes wide with shock, his glasses shattered and forgotten on the grass. His jet-black hair and robes rumpled and the circles under his eyes dark, he looks nearly as weary as the werewolf Remus Lupin, who comes hurrying towards his young student.

Harry stands stunned. "My God, Harry!" Remus Lupin and Sirius Black say almost simultaneously. Hermione Granger is weeping openly, letting out her pent-up anxiety and happiness. Ron Weasley looks like he has gone into traumatic shock. 

__

"Todos impedimenta!" Alastor Moody cries, freezing all of the gathered Death Eaters with a single wave of his wand. "You're all under arrest!" he growls in the nearest approximation of glee he can reach. 

But Harry drops his wand as one would a poisonous snake, as if it would turn on him, too. The green of his eyes brightens oddly. He has never killed before.

His father's two best friends and Harry's own stop before they reach him, taken aback by his reaction to his deed. The boy turns to Albus, looking for guidance; brilliant green eyes meet twinkling blue. Then a flame-red bird swoops from the sky to light on the headmaster's shoulder – the source, I know, of the pained call, mourning for the death of one of the only two wands his feathers empowered.

"I'm a murderer," Harry whispers hoarsely.

"No, Harry," Albus replies gently. "You're an agent of justice. Think of all the murders you have avenged – and, much, much more importantly, all the murders you have prevented."

Harry nods, and swallows as though it hurts. "I need to take a shower," he says mechanically; he picks up his wand and heads, in a daze, towards the castle. Ron and Hermione follow him cautiously; their silent support and friendship is what, I think, Harry needs most.

I turn my attention to the vulnerable figure on the ground. "Do you think we ought to bury him?" I ask tentatively, almost joking, in a morbid sort of way.

"What, treat that evil, murdering scum like a decent human being?" Sirius Black snarls, baring his teeth.

"Voldemort was once human," Albus corrects him softly. Sirius, Remus, and Alastor don't flinch at the name, but I instinctively twitch nervously.

"Before I was born," Remus comments with quiet sarcasm.

"Do what you will with _that,_" Sirius says, spitting on the prone body. "I'm taking a shower, too – to wash the stench of these filth off me"; he jerks his head towards the frozen Death Eaters in their circle.

He and Remus set off for the castle, the latter saluting the headmaster casually with his wand before turning around. I haven't seen them looking anything but ragged and weary in a long time, but there is a certain lightness to their stride today, their heads held high.

But I look down, somehow unable to take my eyes off the remains of the most brutal Dark Lord in history. To believe that it's finally over…

"I'm taking this lot to where they rightly belong," Alastor growls, performing a mass Stunning and then _Mobilicorpus_ to take them off the boundaries of Hogwarts grounds to Apparate them all to justice, so to speak.

Albus and I watch their bumpy, floating-and-wooden-legged progress into the distance, unable to contain some giddy, amused laughter. The crooked Auror and his flock of black-clad marionettes disappear over the green.

Suddenly, then, I sink to my knees in inexplicable exhaustion. "Well, that's it, Minerva," Albus remarks quietly. "Last night was the final night of sleeplessness and fear – until history inevitably repeats itself, and we get another Grindelwald or Voldemort, or whoever assumes the mantle of 'villain of the century.' I sincerely hope that he comes neither in your lifetime or mine. Two Dark Lords are enough for one wizard to live through."

I say nothing. I am still staring at the pale corpse. The face is not so snakelike now; the eyes are no longer glowing red. They have dark irises once more. I knew those eyes – the dark ones, not the red ones. I knew that face, I think, with the slit-like nostrils a bit more human, with the scant bits of white hair more abundant, and jet-black –

"Minerva, I know that you and he were once…more than friends," Albus says gently, a tentative laugh in his wise, soothing voice.

I look up, startled and blushing. "You knew about that?" I ask guiltily.

"Last time I took inventory, I am neither blind nor deaf," Albus jokes, "and someone must have had both of those disabilities not to have noticed, back in your sixth year at Hogwarts." I cannot see his smile, hidden in his beard, but it is written in the twinkle in his eyes.

I return the smile, then turn back towards He Who for so long Must Not Be Named. Tom Riddle. Such an ordinary name for one that, in fear, cannot be spoken.

Something catches my eye, where the sinister black robes have fallen slack around the gaunt, white body. There is discoloration, like… I reach for the robes, feeling intrusive, but burning with compulsive curiosity –

"Holy God," Albus murmurs, kneeling beside me and the corpse. I am at a loss for words.

The white shoulders and sides are mottled with discoloration…like bruises. Some are old, already turned yellow-brown; others are fresh, reddish or purple with internal bleeding. There are welts, also, on the papery flesh, and even raw cuts.

"He was abused at the orphanage as a child," Albus mutters, almost to himself. I cannot help but laugh, if nervously. "For God's sake, Albus, that was over fifty years ago, if not sixty! All of the marks must have faded long before now!"

"He kept them fresh, somehow," he murmurs. "Perhaps – perhaps, because the beatings and lashes were always fresh in his mind, they stayed on his body, through the years. Perhaps, as long as he kept his anger and his hate, the marks for which he sought revenge could never fade. Perhaps, because his soul could not heal, his body could not heal, either. Perhaps he never wanted to heal, never wanted to lose his anger and hate."

My hand covers my mouth in horror, tears stinging in my eyes.

"What do you feel for him now?" Albus asks gently.

"Hate," I reply bitterly. "He killed so many people, broke so many lives. The Longbottoms, the Bones, the Prewetts, the McKinnons, Lily and James, Cedric…and Severus…" I stop to brush away angry tears, the pain of the newest wound still acute. "No amount of abuse excuses those murders, or brings back their lives."

"Not for Voldemort, but for Tom," Albus prompts.

I pause a moment, my fingers clenched tightly in my teeth. Kneeling beside the broken form, tears running down my cheek, I briefly trace a lash mark along one of his stark ribs with my finger. Then I reach out to close the haunting, haunted dark eyes of Tom Riddle so that he won't stare into my eyes so searchingly. "I almost expect to see nail holes in his palms," I say, laughing dryly. I sigh, then look up into Albus's sympathetic, sorrowful eyes. "Nothing but pity."

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Voldemort

Tom Marvolo Riddle:

They Who Must Ever

Be Named and remembered–-

that those lives

may never be repeated.

AD 1936 - 1997


End file.
